-
Client’s clicks/impressions completely tanked… what now?
I posted about this situation before, but for a little more context:
* Client launched website in late Feb (same domain as old site just updated design/structure)
* Client was supposed to set up redirects but did not complete this task
* Structure of website changed pretty dramatically and content changed as well (overall topic of website is the same)Per Google Search Console, the old website was getting roughly 4,000 impressions and an average of like 30 clicks per day. For the past 2+ months, they have gotten MAYBE one impression per day and zero clicks. It has been on a harsh decline since the new site launched.
In SEMrush it looks like they lost \~1,500 keywords. The majority of keywords they do have right now are ranking 21-100.
In their SEMrush site audit, there are 38 errors/warnings/notices including:
* 3,733 structured data items invalid
* 1,181 duplicate content issues
* 151 pages with slow load speed
* 124 redirect chains and loops
* 72 broken internal links
* 17 pages with 4xx status
* 11 pages with 5xx status
* 406 URLs with a temporary redirect
* 17,552 pates without an H1 headingAnd a bunch of other issues but I think these are the most pertinent?
I’m fairly novice at SEO (I can perform audits and keyword research, and make content recommendations, but am very new at some of this more strategic work). I have been tasked with coming up with a list of recommendations for this client to improve their ranking.
Any advice?
-
1 Reply
-
Don’t ya love it when clients launch without taking your first advice? Happens all the time.
For only a single impression to show after this much time, I tend to think something is wrong with the site itself.
And you’re looking at the domain view of GSC, not just a http or something limited like that?
-
First thing they should do is fix the redirects. If URLs changed, they lost all ranking signals without the redirects.
Why are there 400 temporary redirects? That is a potential issue.
There should be zero broken internal links.
What is causing there to be almost 1200 pages of duplicate content. Usually when I see that many, there is an issue with both the non-WWW and WWW versions of webpages being accessible.
120+ redirect chains and loops? That needs fixed.
Other than the missing redirects, it looks like the problems are all listed right there in front of you.
-
Check to assure you don’t have the new site blocking spiders. (Robots.txt, or if WP, Settings > Reading > Allow search engines)
I’m a technical SEO person, so if you want to send the URL via DM, I’d be glad to take a look and tell you what to focus on.
-
Yeah seems like you’re thinking of everything right. SEO tends to be way simpler than we’d think so you’re likely more skillful than you’re giving yourself credit for.
Do you know if the dev site is perhaps still live and indexing therefor tanking the main site? Or any other 2nd type of site like this? check the SERP for the clients business name and ensure only the main site shows.
Otherwise…
– fix site structure and setup redirect mapping immediately, that should fix internal linking issue as well.
– how has content changed? i would try to resurrect the old ranking content. Check on the content archive for the old version of the site.
– did backlinks drop off as well? look for backlinks that were lost due to the page URL disappearing and get those back asap.
– what is the new CMS? wordpress? ensure all page scores are green on pagespeed.web.dev scores. In WordPress this is usually a matter of having a lightweight theme with minimal rendered resources — that may lead to another rebuild needed.If it were me I would press very hard on how the client fucked this up and needs to just hire someone proficient to manage everything and never again try to do things themselves. The whole “we can do it ourselves for less” thing will just cost them more money and less results in the long run. I personally stop working with clients when this type of thing happens because they always cause the most stress and pay the least.
Best of luck!
-
Why is the client responsible for the redirects? Just curious…
-
Be careful if the person that signedoff on the launch is still in the room. That person is basically responsible for this failure. Might want to thread carefully if he/she has clout.
I’m guessing you don’t have a backup of the old site to crawl?
Double check your traffic reporting, if you have access to raw log files… perhaps analytics isn’t loading properly
Use screamingfrog and do a full deep dive audit.
Start redirecting old URLs prioritizing those that were valuable.
Hard to tell from just that SEMrush output, some could be false positives.
Charge every minute of your time.
Log in to reply.